Feeding baby water dragons

[ingie]

2 weeks ago I got 4 2 month old Gippsland Water Dragons. They are so cute!
The guy i got them off was feeding them on small crickets only. I was wondering if anyone has tips on how to get them started on fruit & veggies and things that aren't alive. They show no interest at all. So far all I have tried is putting a bit of grated apple and carrot in their food dish and putting their noses in it a little bit..... I also put a few tiny pieces of chopped mouse on the plate as well...
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Wild~Touch]

They will try to EAT ANYTHING THAT MOVES , try earth worms snipped into small pieces or meal worms (the soft white ones) they manage tiny woodies if they can catch them.
If they will eat the above...then put worms in the middle of a dish of whiskas jellymeat or salad sprinkled with Repti-Cal or Wombaroo Reptile Supplement.....(mine aren't big on salad)
When they are adults they will eat a bit of banana and strawberries and pink rats
Hope this helps
Cheers
Sandee

 

[ingie]

Thanks for that advice - I tried it out yesterday, they had a look at the worms but didn't seem to want to eat them - fussy little things! I will keep trying though.... They are eating a lot of calcium coated crickets though... Does anyone have any other tricks?

 

[Olive_Her]

hey,
i probably wouldn't worry about trying to get them to eat variety until they get a bit older, they will probably begin to eat it at a certain stage without any tricks...
i have a few things you could try, unfortunately im not sure if any of them will work but they might be worth a try...
if they are responding to the movement of the crickets you could hold some fruit on the end of tweezers and move it around and tease them, see if they will take it...
another thing you could try is to put your crickets in the freezer (in their container lol) and leave them for 10 or so minutes... then take them out, and use tweezers to hold the cricket and a piece of fruit together and see if they will eat it then... but because they would only be tiny, this is a very big effort which would probably have no result... you could also try getting them used to eating from tweezers... so once again crickets in the fridge but feed them one cricket at a time and make sure they take it from the tweezers ... and then after a while of doing this, just switch the crickets with fruit...
the only other thing you can do is just leave some fruit in their food bowl for a little while, and dont feed them anything else... but dont leave it too long because they are only young...
last resort try telling them that it will make them big and strong...
hope that help (probably didnt lol)
enjoy and goodluck with it all

 

[Wild~Touch]

Dragon Power

Thanks for that advice - I tried it out yesterday, they had a look at the worms but didn't seem to want to eat them - fussy little things! I will keep trying though.... They are eating a lot of calcium coated crickets though... Does anyone have any other tricks?

Hold the crickets for 24 hours....never underestimate the power of the dragon...they are so little and cute and they are training their mum already

When they are hungry they will eat...be it crickets or whatever


ps....Walk away and don't watch them as they are shy feeders when young...mine will wait and watch until they think the coast is clear and then jump down and eat

Cheers
Sandee

 

[ingie]

Haha yes they are training me already...... Thanks for the advise!